The present invention relates to a displacement assay for detection of small molecules through detectable spectral changes.
Throughout this application, various publications are referenced to as footnotes or within parentheses. Disclosures of these publications in their entireties are hereby incorporated by reference into this application to more fully describe the state of the art to which this invention pertains. Full bibliographic citations for these references may be found at the end of this application, preceding the claims.
In vitro selection and amplification procedures allow isolation of nucleic-acid receptors or aptamers for almost any small molecule or protein target. (Brody et al.; Patel et al.) Similarly, the immunization can elicit antibodies against most molecular targets. (Perry et al.; Birch et al.) However, no general method exists to engineer such nucleic acid or protein-based receptors to permit direct transduction of the recognition event into a change in the visible spectrurn. (Wiskur et al; Bear et al; Miyaji et al; Rakow et al; Chin et al; Aoyagi et al; James et al; Smith et al; Cao et al; Yang et al.)